


The Lovely Rain, The Dark Dream, and The Tower

by iconic (IrisAnne)



Category: youtube - Fandom
Genre: Betrayal, Childhood Friends, Flowers, Half-Siblings, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Japanese Culture, Love Triangles, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Non-Chronological, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Prostitution, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-24 03:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18160772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisAnne/pseuds/iconic
Summary: A love triangle set in Edo era Japan between the two most popular courtesans from rivaling brothels and a foreigner.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I HAVE TO STOP STARTING SO MANY PROJECTS ASDHAFI  
> um i dont rly like Signe/Felix but I think it's an interesting dynamic and i like doing rare pairs so sue me

_ “Those fleeting words, _

_ ‘I will come back for you, wait for me.’ _

_ Although the season has elapsed and cycled, we have become adults _

_ and I am still believing, and waiting---” _

_ -Hitoshizuku _

* * *

If you are looking for a story with a happy ending, then I am sad to say there isn’t one here; For the story you are about to read is highly unpleasant, filled with sadness, longing, betrayal, and heartbreak. You see, love is a fickle thing. It cannot be obtained simply because one wishes to obtain it; it comes and goes as it pleases, consumes your mind and body completely until there is nothing left but the shell of the person you used to be. Even the brightest rose, nurtured and cared for, loses its coloring that once made it beautiful.

The story I am going to tell you is precisely how that rose lost its coloring.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't mean to write this 'Sound and the Fury'-esque fdkjsbfdkl enjoy

 

_“Oh damn it all to hell!”_

Marzia huffed and crossed her arms, her cheeks puffed out and her pink lips pouting as she descended gracefully on the mat, placing her petite body next to Signe’s own lanky one. Signe placed her teacup down on the table, shifting slightly so that her own ornate green costume wouldn’t clash with Marzia’s elegant red one, yet making an effort to stay as physically close to her friend as she possibly could. Her movements mirrored Marzia’s own, unconsciously following her mannerisms in her clumsy signature that made her so charming to those who knew her body like they knew their own.

“What is it this time?” Signe asked sarcastically, uncaring if anyone else heard her use an inappropriate tone of voice in such a casual setting ( _It’s my one day off, gosh darn it. I need time to relax and be myself, too!)_. Her voice cracked near the end, her throat weary from the days of abuse she was put through with no break when a regular client of her’s liked to hear her scream in bed but whisper in conversations. It’s lack of usage in a regular pitch made her wince, and she picked up her tea cup once more and kept it close to her pink lips.

“Okay, remember the businessman I told you about two weeks ago?” Marzia began. “The one with the-”

“The wreath-hair, yes-”

“Well,” Marzia paused, looked around the room they were in, the plain paper walls serving as the only barrier from them and the outside world listening to her every lilt and tone she composed her words in, leaned in, and said, “He came to visit me the other day, requesting that we meet in my own personal room this since his wife doesn’t like it when he meets me in public and, before I could take him up to my room, Mother stopped me and said that since Honoka, the old _oiran_ , retired I will finally be able to decide for myself if I wanted to pleasure certain men or just entertain them-”

“Oh! Congratulations!” Signe interrupted, automatically sitting up straighter in shock but smiling contentedly.

“Hush, you! I haven’t gotten to the best part yet!” Marzia giggled, swatting her friend’s arm playfully with a pretty blush on her plump cheeks. “Anyway, as I was saying, Mother said I will finally be able to make my own decisions about which type of client I can service but the catch is is that I’d have to convince wreath-hair to sponsor the household-” Signe gasped “-since she’d be losing a significant amount of income now that I won’t have to service more clients pertaining to the worker’s district and I’d have to travel to the city to meet my important sponsors.”

“Oh but he has such bad breath!” Signe exclaimed. “He came to my brothel once when he couldn’t find you and Gabbi kept complaining about how he has dog breath and how his mustache felt like hard wires. You better learn to get used to kissing a dog’s breath! Ha!”

Signe and Marzia fell into a fit of giggles, their pale skin tinted a light shade of pink. Although moments like these were few and far between, Signe missed laughing because she wanted to, not because the businessman that paid for her time liked hearing her laugh as he penetrated deep inside of her womb. Seeing Marzia free of her typical white makeup was like a breath of fresh air after being indoors all day working with no break. Signe found herself missing her childhood friend more than she’d be willing to admit; Marzia was constantly busy with her customers and traveling outside the pleasure district to entertain important guests and Signe with her own responsibilities that they hardly found any time to spend together at all even though their respective brothels were only a street apart.

Marzia reached a hand over, her long, red acrylic nails touching her hand before she felt Marzia’s soft palm and voiced that concern.

“How I missed you so! I wish Mother hadn’t sold you to _that_ place so we could always see each other,” she spoke with an elegant smile on her face. “If you were with me still I know you would have stopped the Director from indulging me with _ahen_.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Signe blushed and placed her own hand over Marzia’s, her green acrylics contrasted against Marzia’s red ones. “You know that we will always be together no matter how much they try to seperate us. We were meant to be together,” she finished with a wide smile on her face.

“Our beauty combined will surely blinded them all with how radiant we are,” Marzia replied before falling into another fit of laughter, as if she’d just said the funniest thing all day.

Signe and Marzia were one of the most beautiful and coveted courtesans in their little corner of the city, foreigners and natives often seeking for their Eastern heritage that was highly emphasized with their Western physical characteristics. Marzia was born as the illegitimate daughter of a samurai and a foreign woman who had sold her as a child to the same _okiya_ Signe had been sold to by _her_ mother, who conceived and carried her to full birth when she was raped by a businessman from overseas.

_“It was fate that we met each other,” Marzia said out of the blue one day after agreeing to meet with me after she was done working for the day, taking a long inhale from her wooden pipe and blowing out a cloud of smoke from between her full lips that were smeared with red lipstick. She looked away for a moment, distracted by the chirp of a bird that rested on her window sill. I was about to speak up again to center her back into the moment and elaborate on what she had said when she spoke up again. “A pair of lost souls finding comfort in the other: an illegitimate daughter and the product of a disgraced mother.” She turned towards me, her head tilted to the side with her abnormal pink hair falling in waves down the length of her petite body. I could see why Felix was mesmerized by her---she was strange, unique, stood out of place, like rain in a desert. “A bit tragic, wouldn’t you agree?”_

Growing up in the _okiya_ Marzia was always pampered, decorated in beautiful silk kimonos and ornate headpieces with plain flowers accentuating her natural beauty. _“Anything more beautiful will just overwhelm even a blind man,” Mother told her._ She blossomed into adulthood with an elegant figure and graceful features and moved with the same delicacy of a butterfly. Every young girl wanted to be her; her movements flowed naturally like a stream rushing over stones, her actions captivating her prey into tasting her smooth and unmarred skin with the promise that she’ll stay young and beautiful for them forever. Even her own profession couldn’t deter both men and women from falling in love with her, knowing that she could never afford to ever return those feelings. She was a dancer of the night, a fantasy that could never be captured, a sweet illusion more addictive than the opium she smoked from the brown wooden pipe seemingly attached to her porcelain right arm.

_Like butterflies of the night dancing in sweet honey._

Signe felt, next to Marzia, like she couldn’t even dare to begin to compare herself to someone so beautiful. She herself was dressed in strange and exotic flowers that were much more beautiful to Marzia’s own, yet Signe could not help but feel envy towards her friend’s lack of such complex flowers. She was clumsier in nature, a bit more lanky and weak due to her physical ailments that she suffered as an infant, but still beautiful nonetheless. Her Western features didn’t compliment her Eastern ones in the same way how Marzia’s did; her nose was a bit too big on her small face and her gray eyes caused people to stare at her like they would a chicken with a missing leg. Her small body drowned in green and blue silks, enticing those who wanted to unravel her like a gift with her pale and slender legs just barely teasing out and revealing the flesh to those addicted to it. Even her hair, rich in the golden brown color everyone coveted, was no match for Marzia’s unusual bright pink hair. Really, in her own mind Marzia was the Earth filled with unexplored secrets and wonders that made her so beautiful and Signe was just the solitary yet luminescent moon that orbited her from afar, admired at a distance with no real significance to her existence.

_“Let’s be together, forever and ever.”_

“I already miss you.” Marzia enveloped Signe in a hug, drowning her even further in magnificent robes that looked too big even for a fully grown woman. Her citrus scent filled Signe’s nostrils, not quite masking but rather complementing the smell of smoke that accompanied Marzia wherever she went, reminding her of the cold nights they spent together huddled by the roaring fire with the ashes from the wood floating and encasing them in a sheet of white powder akin to that of snow.

 _“She always smelled like citrus and smoke, even back then when we couldn’t begin to comprehend what it is that our older sisters at the time did for a living, much less understand what_ ahen _, one of the gifts they often gave us, was. But it didn’t matter---she smelled like home.”_

“I miss you too,” she cried, tears falling from her doe eyes in inky black puddles. They held each other like that for some time, rocking back and forth, until Marzia’s personal attendant arrived;

“A client requests your presence.”

“I’ll be there in a moment, thank you.”

She was the first to pull back, quickly wiping any tears from her porcelain cheeks with that same pink smile on her face. With a tender caress she swiped Signe’s own tears away and held her pinky out to her, a promise they made to each other back when they were children held on the tip of that delicate finger. Signe linked her own pinky to Marzia’s with a sad smile.

_“I promise I will come back to you.”_

“Don’t bother.”

Felix recoiled back in shock. Signe couldn’t turn around to face him, but she knew the kind of devastated expression his face would make _She knew because wasn’t she the one who comforted him on the cold winter nights when he missed his home, missed the feeling of being loved and wanted by another person even when he himself wasn’t sure of what that feeling love was_? She could feel his longing stare through the red curtain she kept up in her room that separated her sleeping mat from the rest of the room used as a pleasure quarter, could see his silhouette in the mirror in front of her, could almost smell his scent of coffee grinds reaching out to her from the other side of the room. Her hair, usually kept up in an intricate bun with pins and headpieces holding it away from her face and neck, served as another divider between the two, flowing all the way down to her waist like a muddy river. A flower head pin in a vivid red color laid broken by her naked feet, his discarded gift to her after he proclaimed the feeling of love that he had for her.

Signe couldn’t breathe, her tears were near suffocating. She trembled like a leaf against the cold autumn wind, and she wanted nothing more than to run into his strong arms and pour her heart out to him---yet she persevered.

“Signe, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She turned around to face him, her face red as a beet and tears gushing and falling on the fabric of her crimson kimono staining it a deep bloody red. Felix had a pained expression on his face, his stance open and regretful. Signe almost cracked and ran into his arms, wanting to comfort him from the pain and heartbreak he suffered---yet she persevered.

“Get out.”

He didn’t move.

“Get out!”

She grabbed the powders and perfumes and oils from her makeup box and threw them in his direction, not caring if she was doing any actual damage to him or her surroundings. Signe didn’t realize she was screaming until she felt her throat get sore and heard her voice break down, shattering into millions of pieces in the air. When she opened her eyes he was gone, leaving nothing behind to signify that he was even there in the first place.

_“He’s not coming back.”_

Marzia looked back, startled at the voice that spoke to her. She held her parasol closer to her body, the satin kimono doing little to keep her body warm against the cold rain. Her pink hair, once held up in a proudful bun, was drooping down to the earth with stray strands sticking to her cheek. Her mascara clump her eyelashes together, her red lipstick smeared all over her lips, her face a deathly pale white, and even now as she stood pitiful in the rain she looked painfully beautiful.

“He told me to wait for him.” She gripped the parasol tighter and turned away. “He told me

_“I’ll come for you, so please wait for me.”_

Marzia held his palm to her cheek, turning her head to place an kiss to his fingertips as his thumb slid across her face to catch her tears, his other hand caressing her soft strands of vibrant pink hair flowing freely down her back with flower petals falling as if she were a cherry blossom. He leaned down and kissed her exposed shoulder with the same tenderness shared only between two lovers.

Signe couldn’t stand the sight. Those words of “I love you” were so cheaply spoken from his mouth---it made her want to throw up. All of her life she has known Marzia; her worth couldn’t be measured in money. She knew from the moment she loved her that her measure in life was exactly that: love---the love that brought happiness, unuttered by the mouth of a consumer of flesh devoid of color in the fantasy of night. It made her sick to her stomach seeing her fall trap to such lies.

 _A butterfly vanishing with the illusive flower_.

They embraced each other in that field of flowers, basking in the warm sunlight what they thought was the beginning of their happiness blooming to a vivid coloration that rivaled Marzia’s worth. She clung on to that dream that she’d one day escape and be the happiest she could be, experience a young puppy love for the rest of her life.

Marzia looked up to Felix, her face and body bare to his warm touches Signe knew too well.

“ _If so, why don’t you whisk me away this very moment?”_

“It’s something I have to do on my own.”

Mark frowned, his eyebrows creating a large crease on his forehead. Amy dropped the roll of dough she had been working on momentarily to smooth out his crease with a pale hand, her wrist clean and bare for the world to see. Sean was the only one to notice how Felix gulped at the sight of that slender wrist. Mark appeared to move from his place next to Amy but Sean interrupted his flow of thought.

“I think it’s a good idea.” Felix looked at him in shock, blue eyes not expecting for his usually reserved half-brother to pipe up and voice his opinion, especially on a matter that wasn’t relevant to a painter. “Get him to a new change of scenery. Expand the family business. That sort of thing.”

“Father said--”

“We know what Father said,” Sean interrupted. “I’m certain that Felix won’t try to undermine you and take over the business from you. In fact,” he continued, placing a hand on Felix’s shoulder, “you should be elated that Felix is taking interest in the business Father left us. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll accompany him and make sure he doesn’t do anything troublesome.”

Mark didn’t say anything. Amy at this point had completely abandoned the lunch she was preparing and gently caressed Mark’s face, speaking to him in a tone so low only those two could hear. The couple were lost in their own world, talking in such an intimate way that neither Sean or Felix could begin to imagine what it was like to meet someone who knew you better than they knew themself. Sean again was the only one to notice Felix looking longingly at Amy, watching how she moved her fingers across Mark’s cheek and looked amorously into his brown eyes he inherited from his mother. After another moment’s silence Amy turned back to kneading her dough and Mark sighed.

_“Please be careful.”_

Signe’s cotton kimono caught on the loose floorboard. She tripped, grabbing on to the elevated entrance to the _okiya_ and scraping her knee in the process, a gush of red staining the white snow red. She cried in pain. Marzia rushed over to where Signe’s smaller body huddled in a fetal position almost completely under the entrance, her pink hair a dull orange in the fading sunlight.

“Come on, Woosh.” She placed her hands on her hips and tilted them to the side, tears from the cold making her brown eyes gleam gold. She pulled Signe up back to her feet, careful to keep a firm grip with enough space between her and Signe as to not stain her orange cotton kimono red. Their bare feet were brown, staining the pure white snow they tread on an ugly color. “If we don’t hurry up we won’t be able to feed the fire.”

“I… It’s too c… too cold to be… be outside,” Signe gasped. Her pale face had a grotesque pink color, a remnant of her cold. Marzia heaved in a large breath of air. _“Even the way she breathed was elegant. Her lungs had the capacity to hold long gusts of wind for an extended period of time. It’s ridiculous how beautiful she was. Everything she did was unfair. Her promises were unfair.” Signe burst into tears._ She crouched her body lower. Her left pinky finger extended towards Signe.

“It’s okay.” She smiled, lips trembling _from the cold perhaps? I don’t remember what Signe told me---all I know is her lips were trembling so much that her smile kept falling off her face_ “I won’t let anything happen to you as long as you protect me too, okay?”

Signe gave her a toothy grin and extended her left pinky to Marzia too.

_Let’s be together, forever and ever._

“Are you crying, dear?”

Signe pat her cheeks. Her fingertips were wet with tears.

“Ah, I apologize. It seems that my mind has been wandering this entire afternoon.” She took another sip from the tea cup. Marzia simply shrugged and picked up a jade hand mirror, applying a colorless balm on her pink lips. Signe stared at her throughout the process---everything Marzia did she did like she was performing for an audience. “Say, can I ask you a question?”

“What is it?”

Marzia looked sweet, innocent, pure even, in her revealing silk kimono. Her face, devoid of any paints or powders, had an innocent glow to it. Signe loved that face---that sweet, kind face that she’s watched grow up and mature from a bud to a blossomed flower, plain yet elegant against her environment with the sweetest honey and the loveliest perfume that smelled and tasted like a summer’s day.

_Even as the seasons cycle by and we grow up, can I still believe in those words?_

“Do you ever miss them?”

“Hm?”

Signe rested her head on her arms resting on Felix’s bare chest, loose hair from her bun spilling over her shoulders and ticking his collarbone.

“Your family. Do you miss them?”

“Not in particular.” He shifted on the futon to hold Signe closer in a more comfortable manner, his hand wrapped around her small waist. His blue eyes looked nowhere else in the rose colored room but into Signe’s gray ones. ( _“They looked so mournful and calm, like the ocean waves on a cloudy night.”)_ “My mother died during my half-sister’s birth, and my father seemed to favor my older half-brother Mark over me and my other half-brother Sean. It’s strange to be the son of a wealthy man like my father; he thought that women were expendable and that by having as many children as possible he would be able to raise the perfect heir to the family business.”

“What does your family do?”

Felix shrugged.

“Merchant business I suppose. I know Mark wanted me to set up a dry goods store here to export resources from Sweden, which is where we’re from. Sean, the painter, only accompanied me here to learn how to paint using rice paper as a canvas.”

“What about your sister-in-law? Aimi, was it?”

“Amy.” Felix sighed, letting his head fall back to the futon. His finger traced a nonsensical pattern on Signe’s naked back. Signe smoothed the crease between his brow, patient and waiting for him to speak. “I met Amy about four years ago when Mark introduced her to our father as a friend from school when I turned twenty-six. I didn’t know at the time what type of relationship they really had, but the way he looked at her…”

“You wanted to look at someone the same way, right?”

Felix nodded.

“So what happened?”

“Within the year that Amy was introduced to us I thought I fell in love with her---she was kind, funny, considerate, charming, and easily one of the most attractive women I’ve ever met. Of course, Mark proposed to Amy during a family outing almost a year later and they married in the spring of my twenty-eighth birthday. I lived with them for about two years after they returned from their honeymoon along with Sean to study from Mark how to take care of finances for the business. During that time I also met another courtesan around your age named Mika, whom I met on a regular basis.”

“Did you fall in love with her, too?”

Felix shook his head with a soft laugh.

“No, I couldn’t. She reminded me too much of my half-sister, Fanny, and she acted like a child. If I did love her, it was more like a familial love, I guess, like one shared between two siblings. I promised her that when her contract was over I would help her go back to school and study so she’d be able to build a better life for herself.” Felix sighed and raised his arm to caress Signe’s dark, curly hair. “I don’t know if I’d be able to return at this rate.”

Signe blushed.

“Why is that?”

_The empty cry, dredged up from the wells of her heart,_

Felix’s eyes lit up, the melancholy hue gone from his clear, blue eyes. They almost looked like they were laughing, his happiness was overwhelming. Signe couldn’t help but smile too.

“Because I

 _Disappeared before a word was formed_.

“will wait for you forever.”

Signe burst into tears again, clinging on to Marzia’s frame. Marzia placed a singular kiss on the top of her head before she pushed Signe away from her, throwing her bag that held her belongings in hopes that it would deter Signe from rushing back to her.

“Please, Woosh, you need to go.”

Signe’s sobs increased in volume. Aki, one of the other courtesans, grabbed her arm and pulled her back to the entrance of the house, Signe’s cries increasing in volume with every step she was forced to take. Marzia turned her back to her and walked down the corridor to where a tall, lanky man with curly hair stood. Signe opened her mouth in a scream:

_“Do you remember that promise we made that sunset long ago?”_

The jade mirror fell from Marzia’s grasp, falling with a dull _thud_ to the straw floor. Signe felt ashamed for asking such a question, the feeling pooling in from the bottom of her chest and emerging its ugly head to the top. Marzia took a deep breath, her smile gone from her face. She looked at Signe with mournful eyes (“ _I wish they would stop looking at me with that type of sadness”)_ and said,

_“Let’s walk together, side by side.”_

Marzia fell down to her knees _A tower crumbling down_ and cried _They disappeared like illusions_ her heart broken in two _Both the pitiful, sweet flower_ Signe couldn’t bear the sight _and the first love_ She had lost the ones dearest to her heart.


	3. Chapter 3

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Signe rose up from her seat. She looked tired. Her hair, once a magnificent golden brown color, had faded to a dull brown, cut from its impressive length down to a bob that just barely grazed her shoulders; her eyes, glassy and red from their constant crying, lost its vibrant hue. Years of courting had taken a toll on her---even after her sister (who had been taken away as an infant from her mother) had returned to rescue Signe from a life as a courtesan about a year ago she could no longer find the same type of happiness Marzia and Felix had given her before here in the city I grew up in.

_ The rain outside ceased to pour _ .

“Before you go, I just have one more question for you,” I told her. She pursed her lips but turned to face me, her eyes still refusing to meet mine. “Before Felix left both you and Marzia he first told you he would wait until your contract with Ayaka, the woman you worked for, expired within the following two years after he had initially entered a romantic relationship with you while he told Marzia a conflicting account that you had no knowledge of seeing as you didn’t know about their relationship until after two months when you met Marzia for tea.”

“Correct.”

“My question is,” I placed down my pen on top of the rice paper and looked straight into her eyes, forcing her dazed gaze to meet mine, “were you aware that both had been afflicted by the same physical ailment at the same time?”

Signe twisted the green handkerchief between her now-calloused hands. 

“I think I knew deep down that they were; I just didn’t want to accept the fact that I, the person who suffered every illness imaginable as a child, wasn’t the one affected by the one that took M… that took  _ them _ away from me.” Tears fell from her eyes again. “It’s just cruel that the same sickness took them both! Marzia wasn’t supposed to die in the eyes of an audience, doing the one thing in this life she loved most! She was supposed to grow old with me! We were supposed to grow up together!”

Signe broke down sobbing. The entire day had been flooded by her tears. Even when Marzia was nearing her final days and I met with her she didn’t break down the same way. 

_ Only the never-healing scar remains, left behind. _

Although it’s been five years since Marzia’s premature death in the summer of her twenty-sixth birthday it seemed to me like everyone was still mourning her death---every day that I passed by a temple seeking for a new subject to draw or characters to study there was always someone praying with her name on their lips. The only time I requested to meet her was enough for me to understand why: she was an unattainable dream desired by everyone beyond just physical appearance. She was kind, almost motherly---proud and egotistical of her own characteristics when it required her to be, but kind nonetheless. The only painting I ever made of her could never align with how she truly was when she was alive. Marzia was very much like a plain flower decorated and painted over with colors that deteriorated her petals, and I think she was very resentful of that fact. When I asked her about her relationship with my brother, Felix, she said how she knew she didn’t genuinely love her but how it didn’t matter to her. The only person she loved romantically, she said, was Signe. She said Signe was the most delicate flower in the garden, and her suffering made her all the more beautiful. 

_ “It goes past surface-level attractiveness,”  _ she claimed.  _ “The quality of her soul is what makes her so radiant, why Mother decorated her in the most extravagant, exotic flowers---her soul is more beautiful than mine. My only regret is that I’ll never be the one to tell her how lovely she truly is.” _

I rose up from my wooden desk and bowed at Signe.

“Thank you for your time. I’ll have Amy show you the way out.”

Amy appeared from the other side of the mahogany doors, the top of her pink head peeking through carefully, almost as if she were waiting for the moment I would call her back in. She extended her arms out to Signe and hugged her on the way out, moving slowly as if handling a small child. Signe stopped before she could reach the door, turned around and said,

“Sean?”

“Hm?”

“Do you ever miss… him?”

My lips moved to give her a sad smile; I stopped just in time and simply sighed, looking away as to not disrespect Signe’s wishes.

“No.”

Signe sniffled once, nodded at me, and disappeared with the pink-haired woman.

_ She continued to wait without any end in sight for the unfulfilled promise of that summer sunset, as if everything that oath they swore in the sunset _

_ were all a dream…  _


	4. Addendum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note

**Marzia Bisognin**

Illegitimate daughter of a samurai and a foreigner, orphaned and raised by Shiora, the mother of an  _okiya_ in the pleasure district. Her birth name meaning "reality is empty; beauty is painful." Became the youngest high-ranking prostitute in order to make something out of herself. Loved to perform and captivate her prey's attention. Paid back her debt within the first four years she started working as a courtesan. Whose quality of soul did not match her outer beauty. Made a promise to Signe to always be together. Fell in love with Felix three months after meeting him for the first time on her twenty-sixth birthday. Became sick with hypothermia a week after he left. Died during her debut as a  _kabuki_ actress three months later. Loved Signe endlessly.

**Signe Hansen **

Daughter of a foreigner, orphaned and raised by Shiora, the Mother of an  _okiya_ in the pleasure district. Her birth name meaning "weak flower and a purple dream". Sold to a brothel to pay back her debt caused by medical bills to treat her physical ailments she suffered as a child on her sixteenth birthday. Signed a contract to work for Ayaka as a courtesan until her twenty-sixth birthday. Fell in love with Felix two months after meeting him for the first time, but realized she was in love with her childhood friend after her death. Was rescued by her long lost twin sister and fled to Denmark where her father lived and worked as a flower shop owner. She persevered.

**Felix Kjellberg**

Third son of a wealthy merchant whose mother died during childbirth of her half-sister, Fanny, two years after his birth. Who studied business and finance alongside his older half-brother Mark. Thought he fell in love with Amy and escaped in order to find his true love. Shared a puppy love with Marzia. Fell in love with Signe three days after meeting her for the first time. Was heartbroken when Signe no longer reciprocated his love. Died two years after Marzia's death. Left all of his finances to Mika.

**Sean McLoughlin**

Second son of a wealthy merchant. Pursued a career as a painter and novelist. Went on publish a book about the love shared between the two courtesans and his brother. Sired the daughter of a courtesan. Fled his responsibilities.

**Mark Fischbach**

First son of a wealthy merchant. Studied business and took over the family business.  Married Amy Nelson on his twenty-eighth birthday. Mourned the death of his brother and died from alcoholism the following year.

**Amy Nelson**

Daughter of a businessman. Studied business alongside Mark and married him on her twenty-first birthday. Had a daughter named Marzia Signe Fischbach.

**Mika Midgett**

She endured.

**Author's Note:**

> song inspiration: Ama Yume Rou & Koi Yami Rou by Hitoshizuku-P×Yama△ ft. Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin/Len (Rain Dream Tower and Dark Love Tower respectively)


End file.
